Duke Law School: admission requirements and 509 data

What the 2025 numbers say about Duke Law School

Duke Law School received 6,240 completed applications for the 2025 entering class and made 804 offers of admission, an acceptance rate of 12.9%. 222 of those admitted enrolled, a yield of 27.6%. The full first-year class came to 227 students, all full time. Total JD enrollment across all years is 723.

Enrolled students posted a median LSAT of 171, with a 25th percentile of 169 and a 75th of 172. That is 12 points above the 159 median across the 196 ABA-approved schools in this data. It ranks 13 of 196 on LSAT median. Undergraduate GPA ran 3.83 at the 25th percentile, 3.91 at the median and 3.96 at the 75th. 4 of the entering class were admitted on a GRE score rather than an LSAT score.

Full-time tuition is $80,100 a year at a single rate for residents and non-residents. Mandatory fees add $1,729. The school's own living-expense estimate for a single student off campus is $26,116. Tuition, fees and that living estimate add up to $107,945 for one year, or $323,835 across three, before any grant. 685 JD students hold a grant or scholarship, 94% of the student body, and the median full-time award is $35,000. 2 awards cover full tuition or more.

Of the graduating class that sat a bar exam for the first time, 271 of 278 passed, a rate of 97.48%. The weighted average across the jurisdictions where those graduates sat was 82.94%, so the school ran 14.54 points ahead of the jurisdictions it feeds. Ten months after graduation, 229 of 230 graduates (99.6%) held a job requiring bar admission. 168 joined law firms of 251 lawyers or more (73.0% of the class), of whom 163 went to firms of 501 or more. 27 took federal clerkships. The largest single destination was New York with 80 graduates, followed by District Of Columbia with 27.

Duke Law School has been approved by the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education since 1930. It is a private school based in Durham, NC. No first-year students left for academic reasons in the reporting year.

The full 509 record

North Carolina has 6 ABA-approved law schools. The North Carolina guide compares them on LSAT median, cost and bar passage, and covers the state's admission rules.

Data: ABA Standard 509 Information Report (2025), published for consumer disclosure, retrieved from the ABA Required Disclosures portal on 2026-09-01. Bar passage and employment figures come from the same portal's Bar Passage Outcomes and Employment Summary reports for the class of 2024. Figures describe the 2025 to 2026 reporting cycle for Duke Law School and are restated in our own structure; no ABA document or file is reproduced here. Verify anything decision-critical with the school.

Related reading: LSAT score guide, GPA benchmarks, law school cost and ROI, application timeline, all 196 ABA-approved schools, and the Yale profile for the top of the range.